Lab Expectations

PTMScan Proteomics: Universal Species Reactivity with PTM Antibodies

Barry Zee — Wed, 06 May 2026 16:46:59 GMT

We frequently get this question from scientists: “Which species do your PTMScan antibodies work in?”

Matched Antibody Pairs Done Right | Immunoassay Assay Development

alexandra.foley@cellsignal.com (Alexandra Foley) — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 12:45:00 GMT

Since the invention of the enzyme‑linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) more than 50 years ago, the original format has spawned a wide range of ELISA‑like immunoassays that use new enzyme conjugates, detection chemistries, and instrument platforms for colorimetric, chemiluminescent, and fluorescent readouts. While these formats have simplified workflows and expanded use across many sample types and instruments, the assay’s foundation remains unchanged: The quality and compatibility of the capture and detection antibodies—each of which binds to a different epitope on the same target—are ultimately what determine assay specificity, sensitivity, and reproducibility.

In today’s high-throughput, multi-site programs, a single weak antibody can derail months of screening, inflate false positives, and delay critical go/no-go decisions. This makes antibody performance a program‑level risk factor, not just a technical detail. But what determines a high-quality matched antibody pair, and how can assay development teams ensure reliable performance over the lifespan of a project?

When building an antibody pair‑based assay, focusing on a few core principles—antibody specificity, pair compatibility, and early testing of conjugated forms—can help you develop a high‑throughput assay that performs reliably from initial feasibility through transfer to screening and scale‑up.

Green Chemistry: Replacing Triton X-100 with Safer Surfactants

Samantha Webster — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 16:04:00 GMT

When it comes to scientific rigor, sustainability doesn’t have to take a backseat. In today’s research environment, where environmental regulations increasingly shape procurement decisions, many life science companies are rethinking the reagents they use in the lab every day. One such compound is Triton X-100—a non-ionic surfactant that has long been a staple in cell lysis and protein extraction workflows but is now recognized as environmentally persistent and harmful to aquatic life.

Activating Invasion & Metastasis | Hallmarks of Cancer

Jing Li, PhD — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 13:00:00 GMT

How do tumors metastasize and spread? In most cancers, this happens through a metastasis cascade during which cancer cells progressively acquire the ability to invade, survive in circulation, colonize distant organs, and build a network for growth. Together, invasion and metastasis account for the majority of cancer-related deaths from solid tumors and represent a defining hallmark of malignant cancer progression.

This blog covers the metastatic cascade from early events in the primary tumor to local invasion, intravasation to blood vessels, circulation throughout the body, and extravasation and colonization of distant organs, highlighting key molecular events that enable this cancer hallmark and how it is being targeted therapeutically.

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DIA Proteomics for Protein Degradation (TPD) | CST

Jeffrey Silva, PhD — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 15:45:00 GMT

Targeted Protein Degradation (TPD) programs are moving fast, but many still stall out at the same roadblocks: proving on‑target degradation, mapping off‑targets, and understanding the mechanism with enough insight to make confident decisions.

Liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC-MS) proteomics can help you overcome these challenges by providing valuable biological insight with an unbiased, quantitative view of both protein abundance and ubiquitin modifications in a single workflow, even when antibodies don't yet exist or don't perform well for your protein of interest.

Alissa Nelson, PhD
Principal Scientist, Proteomics

“The biggest challenge in TPD is not finding degraders—it’s proving what they’re really doing across the proteome.

When you combine DIA proteomics with ubiquitin remnant enrichment, you’re not just measuring whether a protein gets degraded—you’re seeing the ubiquitination events that drive that change.”

In this blog, we’ll look at how antibody‑based assays and LC‑MS–based proteomics fit together across the TPD workflow—which questions can be answered using antibody-based assays alone, when to add proteomics, how the two were combined to characterize an androgen receptor degrader, and a practical TPD proteomics workflow you can adapt in your lab.

When Healing Hurts: Tumor-Promoting Inflammation as a Cancer Hallmark

Rob MacDonald, PhD — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 14:30:00 GMT

Inflammation can play different roles in the context of cancer. Short-lived inflammatory signaling can promote the clearance of damaged cells, including cancerous and pre-cancerous cells. When inflammatory signals fail to appropriately resolve, however, the resulting chronic inflammatory environment can directly and indirectly promote cancer formation, survival, and metastasis.

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Reliable Spike‑in Normalization for CUT&RUN and CUT&Tag

alexandra.foley@cellsignal.com (Alexandra Foley) — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 13:03:00 GMT

If you use CUT&RUN or CUT&Tag to map histone modifications, DNA methylation, transcription factor binding, or cofactors across the genome, you’re ultimately trying to detect and identify real biological changes in gene expression. Of course, you want to ensure that any detected changes are not due to cell input, sample handling, or sequencing depth. Historically, however, normalization controls have been applied inconsistently or not at all, leaving the door open for even the most promising datasets to be unknowingly affected by workflow variability rather than true biology.

“Chromatin profiling has a reputation for being technically demanding, and one major challenge is that assays are more qualitative than quantitative,” explains Fang Chen, PhD, Associate Director of Epigenetic Assays at CST. “Scientists are looking for a simple normalization solution that can reveal the factors impacting results. Spike-ins are easy to implement and give you increased confidence in the data you’re interpreting."

Fang Chen, PhD
Associate Director of Epigenetic Assays

“This fundamentally changes how confidently you interpret CUT&RUN or CUT&Tag data... With the Drosophila spike‑in control, when you see a change in your data, you know it’s really because of the biology.”

This post explores how spike-in controls—especially whole-workflow Drosophila spike-in control—make it easy to incorporate normalization into CUT&RUN and CUT&Tag experiments and generate chromatin data you can trust.

Direct vs Indirect Multiplex Immunofluorescence Protocols

alexandra.foley@cellsignal.com (Alexandra Foley) — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 14:30:00 GMT

Direct and indirect multiplex immunofluorescence (mIF) offer straightforward ways to explore spatial biology without specialized instruments. By combining multiple antibodies in the same sample, you can quickly visualize cell types, subcellular structures, and functional states to map how different proteins co-localize within tissue and how this architecture relates to disease biology.

Many low-plex IF experiments use either indirect detection with secondary antibodies or direct detection with fluorophore‑conjugated primaries—methods that can be performed on cells or tissue prepared in a variety of ways, depending on your experimental design. Both approaches fit into common IF workflows and standard widefield or confocal microscopes, but each has its own strengths and limitations for panel design, sample type, and future compatibility with higher-plex platforms.

Here, we cover two practical techniques for fluorescent staining using multiple antibodies in the same assay, and explain how newer tools like chimeric antibodies and the SignalStar^® Multiplex IHC assay can take fluorescent multiplexing to the next level.

<< Jump to the Indirect IF Protocol Overview or the Direct IF Protocol Overview >>

Antibody Selection for Multiplex Spatial Biology | Platform Guide

alexandra.foley@cellsignal.com (Alexandra Foley) — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 16:45:00 GMT

Spatially resolved multiplex detection links cellular phenotype and function to tissue architecture, allowing researchers to ask not just which markers are present, but how they localize and which neighbors they interact with in disease-related microenvironments. Sensitive, specific antibodies are the foundation of these workflows, because spatial readouts are only as reliable as the detection reagents behind them.

Ubiquitination Assays for TPD Research | TUBEs, Antibodies & LC-MS

Gary Kasof, PhD — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 16:45:45 GMT

In targeted protein degradation (TPD) drug discovery, confirming target ubiquitination is a pivotal step toward characterizing its degradation pathway. Yet for many scientists, getting those answers is anything but straightforward. While LC-MS is the most common method for assessing global protein ubiquitination, LC-MS cores are often booked solid, proteomics workflows can stretch weeks (or months), and data interpretation adds another layer of complexity. For teams under pressure to move projects forward, these bottlenecks can stall momentum at key decision points.

Whether you’re optimizing assay conditions at the bench or shepherding multiple projects through the pipeline, the challenge is the same: How to get quantitative, decision-ready ubiquitination data without relying on LC-MS‑based proteomics for every experiment?